76 A COMMON He is cnsp, hard from a mold, a Romanesque Peering from his low-arched niche Like a Coptic clerk behind his desk In a grave relIef: Pop-eyed, suppressing an itch To move but smiling, he is thinking about RetreatIng once more inside his little friary. Stanng from the couch of fever along his bones, Perhaps he will read "An Account of My Hut" Or the fiercely Bostonian "Inman Diary." He will walk instead: bravely-the lightly shaken hand- By the iron fence, committed to getting there alone Across the park, alert for the first last stand. Down the walk from the children who misbehave, The generosity of the trees. These answer The shouting with shade; they offer bandanna waves Above her there, quick as a dancer, a dancer Always a dancer, mother of stxth-grade-bold And balky boys. Heeled with renunciations She talks with him, single and single; old, Conversing above the feverfew and lupines. want to let down the team, so he went. And he started dating a female friend who was in the stands watching the game. Having asked for and got the clarifi- cation, Miller says, he felt he had no choice but to sign the employment agree- ment. When Susan Davis, DeMuth's secretary, typed the contract, she was surprised by the language, since no one else's contract had contained anything like it. "Doesn't this offend you?" she asked Miller. "Yeah, It upsets me," he said. ''Is this legal?" Davis asked rhetorically. "I didn't know people could do this." I N Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, as in most of the country, there isn't any law protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. Several large cities, in- cluding N ew York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, have such ordinances. So does Harrisburg, but it doesn't extend across the river to Camp Hill. Eight states and the District of Columbia have enacted statutes forbidding employment discrimination on the basis of sexual ori- -STEPHEN SANDY entation: California, Connecticut, Ha- waii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Sena- tor Edward Kennedy is currently prepar- ing to sponsor similar federal legislation. To gain political support, the proposed bill is far less sweeping than similar stat- utes forbidding race discrimination; for example, it would exempt all religious organIzations, and it would apply only to large businesses (and thus would not have had any effect on DeMuth and Miller). Nevertheless, it is given scant chance of passage. Indeed, the most heated recent battles have focussed on efforts to roll back those laws that already eXIst, on the ground that homosexuals shouldn't be given "special treatment." Miller therefore made no effort to pro- test the contract By the standards of the DeMuth office, which had seen several of Miller's predecessors leave or get fired, Miller and DeMuth seemed to get on famously. Miller was so eager to make a good im- pression that DeMuth's quirks, some of which drove others in the office crazy, didn't bother him. For a while, DeMuth THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 13, 1994 drove a '64 Cadillac, in part because he wanted a car so big that in the event of a collision he wouldn't get hurt. Then he bought a used Cadillac limousine, which was even bigger, and drove it. Though his wife wore fashionable, expensive clothes, DeMuth boasted that one of his suits retailed for eighty-nine dollars and that he'd got it on sale at half price. He wore the same raIncoat he'd had in high school. One Christmas, Miller and Davis bought DeMuth a new overcoat, but he didn't wear it. Finally, just before a client's funeral, Miller told DeMuth that he wouldn't ride in the car with him or stand near him if he wore the old coat. DeMuth broke down and wore the new coat. At the office, Miller urged DeMuth to computerize their operations, some- thing that most accountants had already done. DeMuth resisted. Finally, he said that if Miller bought the computer and proved that It was cost-effective he'd lease the computer back from him. Miller did, using his own money. To save money while travelling to professional meetings, DeMuth encouraged Miller to share a room with him. DeMuth was fond of organizing a skit once a year at the Hershey Medical Cen- ter. Each spring, the graduating class of medical students attended presentations aimed at preparing them for life after graduation, and DeMuth, partly as a bid to attract future clIents, lectured for about half an hour on taxes and financial mat- ters, concluding with a skit. In the skit, DeMuth played the lead role, that of an I.R.S. auditor in the guise of a Gestapo agent Miller was cast as a terrified tax- payer undergoing an audit. In an exag- gerated German accent, DeMuth made comments like 'We have ways to make you talk!" Under interrogation, Miller was forced to admit that he had donated to a sperm bank and failed to disclose the payment as income. A cigarette figured prominently as a prop. "He got a ciga- rette out, he lit it, walked around in a very threatening manner. He'd bang the ciga- rette on the table, hold it in front of you, light it very slowly," Miller recalls. "Threat was the theme. I hated doing the skit. It was Don's thing. He wanted to perform. Sometimes they laughed, sometimes they didn't." But Miller acted his part without complaint. After signing the contract, Miller heard nothing further from DeMuth on